


Polycephaly

by Dancains



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, One Shot, Set in early Season 3, Snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 04:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12857187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancains/pseuds/Dancains
Summary: Ed leaned in close to where he was sitting, holding the photo for him to see.Oswald squinted at the image. "Is that a snake with two heads?"





	Polycephaly

"Oswald," Ed cleared his throat, as if he were about to say something very grave. "I have something I need to ask you."

 Oswald felt his mouth go dry. He paused, knife and fork still in hand. It was late Thursday evening, and they had been enjoying a roast that Olga had cooked to perfection. Two half-drunk glasses of wine sat between them, casting long, red-tinted shadows onto the tablecloth.

 "Please, Ed. _Anything._ " He carefully set down his silverware, and hoped that Ed couldn't hear the desperate strain to his voice.

 "Could I have tomorrow afternoon off?"

 Oswald blinked slowly. 

 "Of course."

 "Really? I apologize for asking with such little notice."

 That must have been why he sounded so serious, Oswald mused. Ed had only been working as his chief of staff for a few short weeks, topics like vacations and time off had simply not been breached in that span of time.

 "It's fine, Ed. We'll have to move a few things around, but it's quite doable. May I ask what you have planned? Not that, I mean, not that it's really any of my business, how you spend your free time."

 Ed laughed softly, and Oswald wished he could bottle up the sound and keep it forever, like the sweet smelling perfumes in the delicate glass bottles his mother used to keep on her vanity. 

 "I'll tell you," Ed answered, "but I'm afraid you won't find it very interesting. The Gotham Natural History Museum is hosting a live exhibit of rare reptiles. I only just read about it today, and tomorrow is the last day of the exhibit. There was a specific specimen I was particularly excited to see."

 Oswald thoughtfully chewed and swallowed another piece of roast before answering. "On the contrary, Ed, that sounds very interesting. I'd go with you, if you weren't adverse to a little company."

 This time Ed was taken by surprise. "I'd love that, but you really don't have to."

 "Nonsense, I think city hall can handle itself for a few hours without the two of us. At least one hopes."

 Ed smiled wryly, before taking a sip from his glass.

 "What particular reptile did you want to see?" Oswald asked politely, trying his best to indulge Ed's interests.

 "Wait here a second." 

 Oswald watched with curiosity as Ed got up from the table and left the room. He could hear him in the distance, practically bounding up the stairs two at a time. In a few moments he returned, with what appeared to be a Polaroid photo in hand. 

 Oswald wondered where it had come from, before he realized it was probably from the box of possessions--papers and personal effects--that he had managed to obtain from the contents of Ed's apartment. It had been put in temporary storage, while most of his furniture and larger items had been auctioned off or thrown out. Oswald wished he had been able to procure more of Ed's things.

 Ed leaned in close to where he was sitting, holding the photo for him to see. 

 Oswald squinted at the image. "Is that a snake with two heads?"

 Ed nodded excitedly. "I took this myself, when I was fourteen. I had gone into the forest near where we lived to photograph mushrooms and fungi, but then I came across this." Oswald took the photo from his hand, holding it gently.

 The snake in the photo looked small and thin among the grass and tree roots, its bright orange scales mottled with light colored stripes. The most striking thing about it was the fact that its body branched out into two separate faces at the end, giving the appearance of the letter "Y" with a long curving tail.

 "I remember being utterly fascinated," Ed continued, "polycephalic animals are often uncoordinated and don’t survive very well in the wild. I was very lucky to come across it. Because both heads control the body, two-headed animals will move erratically, often in zig-zags, and some will even fight or try to eat their other head. I looked for it many times after it had gotten away, but I never saw it again. Apparently they're going to have one of the largest living two-headed snakes at the museum."

 Oswald couldn't help but return Ed's enthusiastic smile. Something about it was infectious.  
 

   
That night he dreamed about himself as a youth, lost in the shade of a dense forest, unfamiliar trees spanning overhead. He spotted a gangly, bespectacled boy in the distance and tried to follow him, but found that he was unable to catch up to him no matter how hard he tried. He woke up the next morning still feeling vaguely frustrated. 

 He had completely forgotten about the dream by the time their usual lunch hour had rolled around. They picked up sandwiches from a corner deli and ate them in the town car on their way to the museum. 

 Oswald peeled the top layer of bread from his paper-wrapped sandwich and frowned. "I told them I didn't want tomatoes. You'd think they would try a little harder to get the right order for the mayor of the city." 

 Ed smiled. He reached over, and popped the slice of tomato into his mouth. "Problem solved."

 

 Once they had made their way up the steps at the front of the museum and paid for admission, it didn't take long for Ed to navigate them towards the East wing, where current exhibits were shown.

 Oswald wondered how many times Ed had been to the museum before. Perhaps he had spent his weekends there as a university student, new to the city and eager to spend idle hours at its world famous museum, soaking up the details of each individual artifact on display. 

 The rooms with the reptiles had a few more people than the rest of the museum, but still not many on a Friday afternoon. No one seemed to pay particular heed to the mayor and his chief of staff. Oswald was grateful for that--grateful to spend some time with Ed away from the house that wasn't work related.

 He followed Ed as they meandered around the perimeter of the large room, Ed eagerly listing facts about each snake and lizard from memory, with his face nearly pressed to the glass. It reminded Oswald of the man who he had first met on that odd day down at the police station, of the nervous, eager man whose apartment he had woken up in all that time ago. 

 He knew this was still the same man--more confident and certainly better dressed, but still the same Ed at his core. Oswald wouldn't have it any other way, even if the very idea would have been impossible to explain to his own past self. His eyes traced the silhouette of Ed's profile as he spoke--the graceful lines of his brow, and his nose, and his lips, and the bob of his Adam's apple. A soft, tender feelings swelled in Oswald's heart, painful but sweet at the same time.

 As they moved to the next enclosure, Ed startled him by grabbing his wrist in excitement, pulling him a few steps forward.

 "There she is," Ed whispered in awe.

 Oswald peered into the darkness behind the glass, pointedly aware that Ed's hand was still clutching lightly at his wrist. He saw something move among the foliage, glimmering Emerald in the low light. Finally he could make out the shape of a very large snake, with two heads protruding from its body like the smaller one in Ed's photo. It blinked one pair of glassy black eyes at them, and then the other, a forked tongue flicking from each mouth. Oswald found it strangely mesmerizing.

 "Her name is Medusa," Ed read from the plaque with a chuckle, "how fitting."

 "Shouldn't she have two names? Didn't you say that they have two separate brains?"

 "Ed looked at him thoughtfully. "You're right. I might have named them Castor and Pollux, or Apollo and Artemis, in keeping with the Greek theme. Though, of course, those lack the wonderful allusion to snake imagery."

 "Of course," Oswald answered affectionately. 

 They both watched the animal, which seemed to want to pull into two different directions until both heads eventually made their way to the water hole in the corner and drank from it, lapping at the water with their tongues.

 "Do you think they would miss each other, if they could somehow be separated?" Oswald wondered aloud. He regretted the words almost as soon as they left his mouth, knowing someone as scientifically-minded as Ed would think it a silly, fanciful question.

Instead, Ed was quiet for a moment, as if seriously considering it. "I think, after spending so much time in close quarters with each other, they would certainly grow used to the proximity. Even if they often try to pull each other in conflicting directions, they're both dependent on each other, to eat and feed the same stomach, to keep their body safe and sheltered. In a way it almost sounds comforting...put in more poetic terms, they're two souls in one body. It's certainly food for thought."

 Oswald's eyes unfocused as he watched the snake--still curling and writhing its long, lithe body--until he was looking at his and Ed's reflections in the glass instead of what was behind it. Something he had once read in school bubbled to the front of his mind.

 "Didn't Aristotle say something like that? Except, it was the other way around, I think."

 "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies," Ed quoted automatically. The words seemed to echo around them.

 It crossed Oswald's mind briefly that Aristotle and his own mother shared some similar philosophical opinions about love. 

 Ed turned towards him in their mirrored reflection. Oswald turned his own head, and forced himself to return Ed's inquisitive gaze, despite the proverbial butterflies growing in his stomach. 

 "Yes. That's it." His lips quirked into a nervous smile.

 Ed's hand was still at his wrist, thumb making errant movements against the back of Oswald's palm, as if without thinking. They were the only two people left in the reptile exhibit. The room was still and quiet around them.

 Oswald extracted his hand from Ed's grasp, instead slotting their fingers together properly. He heard a slight hitch in Ed's breath, and saw something like recognition coming over his face. Oswald squeezed his hand tighter. He didn't want to let go. He knew he wouldn't have to. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been unusually busy lately, so "Yesterday my Life..." might take a while to update if anyone's following that. This was something I had sitting in my drafts for while...most of the scientific info is correct iirc, the visual description of the first snake and the name of the second one are both based on a real snake named Medusa that you can see if you search "two headed snake" on youtube :)


End file.
